NRA's 'outlandish' views are so far holstering efforts to do something meaningful about guns: Morgan

Don't talk to National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre about gun control or an assault weapon ban. As far as he and his organization are concerned, the answer to gun violence is more guns.

For him, it's not keeping assault weapons out of the hands of "bad guys," it's putting more guns in the hands of "good guys," then stationing them in every school in the nation. I'm sure the gun makers who will sell them the guns can appreciate LaPierre's recommendation of a national "shield" to protect students and faculty, something that will cost billions at a time when the federal government is engaged in a food fight over spending and taxes.

It's not guns, but violent video games and violent movies. Oh, and the media - that's what's responsible for all the bullet-ridden bodies in the statistics being complied. It's everything but the deadly assault weapons and handguns that can be bought by anyone who can plunk down the price for one - or two. In fact, suspects on the national terrorist watch list can own an AR-15 assault rifle or any other type of weapon.

While LaPierre was mouthing his outlandish remarks at a so-called press conference (a press conference that allowed no questions from the press), bells were tolling across the country in memoriam of the 20 schoolchildren and six faculty members gunned down on Dec. 14 by a man wielding an AR-15 and carrying two handguns he took from his mother's house after shooting her in the face several times.

The irony here is that all the weapons that belonged to the gunman's dead mother were legally owned by her. Indeed, before embarking on his killing spree at the school, the gunman shot his mother while she slept.

It was that mass slaughter that put in the spotlight the NRA's opposition to any measure that would place restrictions on who can buy guns of any type.

While the NRA boasts a membership of 4 million (not many in a nation of 250 million souls), when polled nearly two-thirds of the organization's members support some measures of control over deadly weapons such as assault rifles and plugging the gun show loophole where guns are sold without background checks of the purchasers being conducted.

The NRA sees itself as the stalwart defender of the Second Amendment right to bear arms and, by golly, as far as it's concerned there should be no governmental meddling with that right, even if it means thousands will die every year in gun-related violence.

Interestingly, when Australia, following an instance of mass murder with an assault rifle, determined it was time to take action, it passed an assault weapon ban outlawing the ownership of such weapons. That nation also passed strict gun control laws that did not outlaw gun ownership but strictly limited it and decreed licensing and background checks before a prospective purchaser could obtain a weapon.

At the time these law were being enacted, the Australian prime minister declared that his country was not going to succumb to the American disease. Of course, that Down Under nation did not have to contend with a Second Amendment issue. However, it did significantly curtail gun-related homicides.

LaPierre made no mention of the massacres occurring daily on the inner-city streets of Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., or Newark, Jersey City and Camden.

To broach that subject would raise the lamentable matter of the number of handguns available in those places.

Whether the Sandy Hook elementary school slaughter will be the final straw that will mobilize a sustained and determined effort to do something about guns remains to be seen, but so far the NRA has managed to holster such attempts.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Earl Morgan's column can be found in The Jersey Journal every Wednesday.